British Gas supply erroneously taken over by a tenant

peterinreading

We are a landlord of a property rented as a number of separate flats. The gas supply is a communal supply paid for by the landlord. The gas supply was with British Gas, but was recently transferred to Rebel Energy by a tenant without any involvement of ourselves. We have had no communication with Rebel Energy at all.
I requested British Gas to get the transfer reversed as it was an erroneous transfer. British Gas have come back saying:
"An Erroneous Transfer request was submitted to the new supplier to facilitate the return of the gas supply. However, we have been informed that this request has been rejected by the current supplier."
All of this has happened within a period of 14 days.
Similar erroneous transfers also happened with Thames Water and SSE at the same address but we were able to get these transfers reversed without any problems.
So what do I do now?

masonic

You could get in touch with the tenant, perhaps thank them for assuming financial responsibility for the supply to all of the flats. They might reconsider their actions.

QrizB

I give it a month until there's a thread "BG are scamming me, why is my gas bill so high?"

peterinreading

masonic: the tenant is totally uncooperative - I suspect the tenant is trying to cause problems.

Keep_pedalling

As they are not the account holder how did they manage to do this? 

peterinreading

Keep_pedalling: the tenant probably said they were a new tenant moving into the property.

Swipe

Keep_pedalling said:

As they are not the account holder how did they manage to do this? 

I'm not sure that is even considered when a switch is made.

masonic

peterinreading said:

masonic: the tenant is totally uncooperative - I suspect the tenant is trying to cause problems.

That's quite important context for your question. How far down the eviction path are you so far?

Regarding the switch, the existing supplier will normally contact you immediately to notify you that they've received an application to switch supplier. You would have an opportunity to block it. This is essentially what the tenant has just done to you.

It might be worth speculatively making a formal complaint to the new supplier about the fraudulent transfer, so that you can at least take it to the Energy Ombudsman down the line, but the tenant could have switched again by then. Formal complaint to BG is definitely worth doing if they failed to alert you in advance of the switch completing.

Scot_39

The tennant is of course in for a nasty shock when gets the bill for all flats  on his communal supply meter account for winter months

I suspect that will focus their mind(s) to be more cooperative.

Assuming its covered explicitly in your tennancy agreements.

They are likely in breach of it and need to cooperate in returning supply to you with immediate effect.

And of course only you have a contract with other tennants to recover those funds - the at fault tennant(s) has no such contractual route.

tacpot12

Did the tnenacy agreement forbid the taking over of utilities and explain that utilities were paid for the whole block and if a tenant took them over, they would be taking over liability for the whole block? 

peterinreading

masonic I have already made a formal complaint to British Gas which they have rejected. I shall also make a formal complaint to Rebel Energy. If that is also rejected or ignored then I shall raise a case with the Energy Ombudsman.